While I would say that Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett’s book “Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences“, is neither a new book nor an old one (it was published in 2004), it is definitely a classic and a must-read. Moreover, I’m a comparativist, and someone who undertakes systematic case study comparisons, so George and Bennett’s book is definitely my go-to when I want to revise my research strategy.

Similarly, the moral foundations theory originally put forth by Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham purports that humans have (in the most common and widely discussed versions of the theory) five innate moral building blocks: care/harm; fairness/cheating; loyalty/betrayal (associated with in-group/out-group consciousness); authority/subversion; and sanctity/degradation (“sanctity” is also often referred to as “purity” in the relevant discussions). Liberals are highly attuned to care/harm and fairness/reciprocity, but conservatives, while valuing care, also emphasize authority and purity, which means that their approach to care/harm will be very different from that of liberals. (In fairness, many on the far Left also emphasize purity and fall into authoritarianism.)